joining me now for more on this bizarre case, cnn legal contributor and civil rights and law professor avery friedman. morning, avery. >> good morning, carol. >> i think the thing that stands out for most people is that this man was convicted of murder for killing his grandmother who was 92 years old. apparently he beat her to death and he was on parole. he only served 17 years. how is that possible? >> yeah, it seems impossible to happen. but if you study this, spengler was in his late 20s when he committed this murder. and one would expect that he would have spent the rest of his life in the new york penal system. the fact is, though, that he was paroled out and actually had an obligation to report to his parole officer until this happened. but the fact is that it struck me as virtually impossible for the parole department not to know that this guy was a problem. the fact that he committed this murder -- again, even though he was in his 20s, unless he was a model person in the penitentiary, it would seem pretty obvious that there was a problem with this guy and of course the worst ha